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The Christmas Blessing

VanLiere’s sequel to the bestselling The Christmas Shoes catches up with Nathan Andrews (the eight-year-old who bought sequined shoes for his dying mother’s walk into heaven) in his third year of medical school. Doubting his ability as a doctor and still bitter about his mother’s death on Christmas Day years before, Nathan falls for Meghan Sullivan, a young woman in his cardiology rotation who may be suffering from a terminal heart defect. As she languishes, she renews Nathan’s faltering faith and sense of purpose in life. He learns again through love the wisdom his mother shared before dying: “each of us is destined for something, a purpose that often seems muddy”; and even when life brings more pain than it should, in the end there is always joy. Van Liere’s warm prose transforms what would otherwise be a cliched tearjerker of a Christmas miracle into a cozy, inspirational holiday tale. (Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.)